SOCHI, Russia – Among the many points of contention about the 2014 Winter Olympics has been the staggering cost associated with them, a reported $51 billion – and counting.

In answering a question about the spending at a Monday press conference, International Olympic Committee president Thomas Bach of Germany delivered the standard IOC explanation that there are different budgets for the Olympics – operations, sports venue construction and related infrastructure – and said operational costs are in line with previous Winter Games.

Then he added an interesting coda to defend some of the rest, which is more than 90 percent of the total.

“The project presented to the IOC Session seven years ago (when the IOC chose Sochi) was to create a winter sports center for Russia,” Bach said.

“You may not remember that after the dissolution of the USSR (Soviet Union), there was no winter sports center in Russia any more. Russia had to organize national championships outside the country, including (some) in mine.

“Russia is a winter sports nation and wants to establish a winter sports center for Russian athletes and the Russian population. I think this is a respectable interest and intention. And now we can see this winter sports center.”

It remains to be seen whether Russian winter athletes will base themselves far from the country’s population centers to train. But U.S. athletes do it, with dozens of the best settling near the Olympic facilities in Park City, Utah and Lake Placid, N.Y.

Of course, there still remains the issue of cost overruns, which many critics say owe to friends of Russian president Vladimir Putin lining their pockets with ill-gotten construction money. When Putin swayed the IOC seven years ago, he promised $12 billion in government money to cover building facilities and infrastructure.